


Altitude

by prairiecrow



Series: Geometry [11]
Category: Knight Rider (1982), Torchwood
Genre: All The Things Jack Cannot Say, Compulsion, Established Relationship, Guilt, M/M, Oaths & Vows, Pheromones, Platonic Soulmates, Secrets, True Names, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 09:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1262092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to "Random Variables". Michael Knight has returned to his home dimension, leaving KITT behind — and Jack Harkness isn't sure how he should feel about that... because he's lived long enough to recognize true love when he sees it, in his own heart as well as in the eyes of another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Altitude

Ianto Jones was right about one thing: Jack Harkness was fond of roofs, for all sorts of reasons. Take tonight, for example: standing with feet squarely planted and arms akimbo on top of Cardiff City Hall, the nighttime city spread out below him like a jewelled counterpane, with gusty dark wind at play in his hair and the winter's chill filing him with each inhalation, it was easy for him to feel cool and elevated, a deathless angel far above the concerns of mere mortals…

… or so he tried to tell himself. And on an ordinary night he might even have believed it. But the last thirty-eight hours had been far from ordinary, and this evening he was finding cavalier peace of mind more difficult that usual to achieve. 

Yesterday he'd come close to losing something he never should have wanted in the first place, because Michael Knight had been found — and more than merely found, he'd been attained. KITT's original pilot had crossed the gulf that had separated them for over a year, and the way KITT had reacted when they finally stood face to face, the joy that had shone in every line of his beautiful android body, more radiant than the midsummer sun and fathomless as the unending sea…

Jack had known instantly that all was lost. He'd lived long enough to recognize true love when he saw it, and too long, that he should have survived to see this — and to feel his own love broken at the root, never spoken and now too late to breathe a single word of it aloud. He was proud of himself, actually, that he'd kept resolutely silent while KITT and Michael had warmly embraced: perhaps his eyes would have betrayed him, if either of them had spared a second's attention for anything but each other. But they hadn't, and he'd been left to the privacy of his own thoughts, to the task of composing the right words to say his farewells, and the even more bitter work of binding up his stricken and bleeding heart, its dearest delight torn away from him too soon — 

— but then, Tosh's pronouncement: that although Michael had to return to his home dimension in less than half a day, KITT had no hope of following him. The expression on KITT's face had been utterly devastated, and the rejoicing in Jack's heart had been as ferocious as it was blackly secretive — barely more intense that his pain, the soul-ache of sympathy he hadn't chosen for a creature that lacked even the honesty of blood to warm its perfectly formed limbs. 

Alone now, gazing out over the city he'd chosen to guard and protect almost a century and a half ago, he drew a deep breath of the icy air and exhaled it slowly, and tried to feel free for even a single beat of his immortal heart. He couldn't manage it, and he couldn't quite decide if he should be enraged that he was still enslaved, or relieved that he hadn't been freed from his chains, or filled with despair on both counts.

He raised his eyes to the sky, picking out the few stars that could be seen through the glow of the city below. _If you came for me now, my dearest Doctor — could I go with you? Could I leave him behind, if you told me he wasn't welcome on the voyage?_ He didn't want to know the answers to those questions, and at the same time he knew them too well — and he hated himself for it, in double measure because KITT was innocent in all this and, being so purely loved, was incapable of being despised for a crime he had no idea he'd committed: the imprisonment of Jack Harkness, even to claiming the untouchable treasure of his Name Indelible. Perhaps losing KITT to Michael Knight would have killed him after all, but in Jack's case death was far from a permanent condition… and perhaps in resurrection, or in a series of resurrections, he would have been cleansed of the addiction he both adored and —

Behind him, across the rooftop, he heard the door to the inner stairwell creak open. He didn't have to turn around to see who it was: he recognized the cadence of those footsteps on gravel, lightly agile, and the scent that reached him on a traitorous surge of wind — delectable and toxic, entwining him in chemical chains whose bonds reached to his soul — brought it all to mind: the effortless grace and sweet slim contours of a body his hands and mouth had explored at leisure on many a previous night, and the personality that went with it, as crisp and exhilarating as a rare white wine perfectly chilled in flawless crystal.

_Still mine to get drunk on, rather than months or years spent dying of thirst —_

"Captain," KITT said quietly, respectfully, advancing to come to a halt about fifteen feet away. Giving Jack space, and Jack felt every centimetre of separation as keenly as a blade through his heart. "I hope I'm not intruding."

Jack didn't turn round. He didn't dare. "Thought you'd still be recharging." _Because you slept with him, didn't you? After an experience like that, you'd need time to process it properly, to wrap yourself in dreams of him for as long as you —_

"There was no need." He sounded mildly surprised at the almost-question, and Jack, who would never have characterized himself as jealous man, felt another surprising layer of grief and exultation unfurl itself in his chest: _So he didn't get that part of you, as much as you would have cherished the act of giving yourself to him that way. That part of you is still mine — and_ ** _only_** _mine!_

"So," and at this point Jack was running his mouth simply to give himself time to paste together a decent mask over the raw surface of his own conflicting emotions, "you stepped out of the recharge unit and came looking for me…" He turned, his hands still on his hips, and arched an eyebrow at the black-coated android watching him with unblinking eyes. "Because?"

"I wanted to thank you," KITT responded at once.

This time both eyebrows made the trip upward. "Thank me? For what?"

"For telling Michael what he needed to hear, so he could return home without worrying about me." A trace of a smile touched his thin lips, devastatingly beautiful and full of immeasurable sorrow, making Jack want to go to him at once and kiss it off his face. "I won't forget what you've done for me — for us, actually. And I'll find some way to repay you: you have my word."

Jack remembered the exchange clearly, although the memory burned like dry ice: Michael Knight's final words, directed at Jack himself — _Take care of him, huh?_ — and Jack's own words in response, a vow born of a single shared passion: _With my life. Forever._ For a couple of seconds he couldn't speak for the swell of nearly desperate desire in his breast, for the tightness of anguish in his throat, and KITT had turned away again, crossed the rooftop, and opened the stairwell door by the time Jack decided to take the risk after all, forcing his tone to devil-may-care lightness: "What if I meant it?"

KITT paused in the doorway, turning his head just enough to speak over his shoulder: "Forever is a long time — long enough to make any such commitment unrealistic, particularly for a man with your… proclivities." Jack heard his smile widen again, wryly sardonic. "Rest assured I took it as it was intended, and I appreciate the strategy behind it. Well played, Captain — very well played indeed!"

And then he was gone, leaving Jack alone again — this time with the truth, which was absolutely the last companion he wanted on this cold and lonely night.

Less than ten seconds later the stairwell door opened and closed again — slammed carelessly in the wake of Jack's hasty pursuit, because given the choice between facing his tawdry truths alone and embracing the shining heart of his misery, the greatest truth and the only truth that mattered, with a lie on his lips and a hundred thousand unspoken words in his heart…

In their shared caresses, the fervent press of real skin to synthetic skin and the incandescence of smiles and shining gazes, deception had no room to intrude — a holy place indeed, and now that Michael Knight was out of the picture, a sanctuary that was, at last, theirs — and theirs alone.

[THE END]


End file.
